Create a new series premise

[PointyHairedJedi]

I've never been trapped in a lift with other people yet, but I imagine it will happen someday. It does strike me as a pity that I won't be around afterwards to see how convincing an explanation the other occupants can come up with for the many signs of blunt force trauma that the coroner will find on my body.

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by PointyHairedJedi

It does strike me as a pity that I won't be around afterwards to see how convincing an explanation the other occupants can come up with for the many signs of blunt force trauma that the coroner will find on my body.

There must be a way to manage it, though, and then you may have your series premise. Has there ever been one before in which the main character gets murdered every week? It'd be sort of Quantum Victim, or something.

[Nate the Great]

Ooooh, how about something akin to Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue (bear with me). Our heroes are temporal researchers, most likely from the 29th century. However, they went back to our time using a primitive version of the time transporter. There was an accident, and our heroes are stranded. They can still communicated with the future, but the accident tagged their molecules with something that prevents 29th century tech from beaming it. They manage to jerry-rig a more primitive transporter that can beam them around the planet, if not to the future. The computer database was damaged, so our heroes no longer no everything that's going to happen. Our heroes must find a way home without interfereing TOO much with the present. Perhaps they encounter one of the Vulcan researchers that was active in our time period and swear them to secrecy. Maybe there were other alien races directly interfering with our development which our heroes must either help or hinder. Maybe Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln (now getting up there in years) and their assistants (or even-gasp!-children) help out our heroes from time to time. You could have the Eugenics Wars in the background, supporting it with real-world events (think the Eugenics Wars books, which I enjoyed). Henry Starling! Plexicorp! The Botany Bay project! Heck, Buck Bokai as a child! Just why did baseball die? The possibilities are endless!

[AKAArzosah]

A new series... hmm...

How about... people spontaneously developing superpowers! No wait, that's been done, what, 6 or 7 times now?

OR... people on a space ship! Wait, um, approximately 9400 times?

How about... someone is kidnapped from Earth in the 18th/19th/20th/21st Century and has to learn to survive 'out there'. What, about... 4 times?

Maybe... aliens will invade and try to kill/enslave us all! Oh right, 86 times.

Ok, so, people who are on a spaceship together (because they were all kidnapped from different times) begin spontaneously developing mutant superpowers and everyone hates them until aliens try to invade and kill us all and the mutant super heroes become the first last and only line of defense against the worst scum of the universe.

[Nate the Great]

As all of the people who keep remaking public domain classics will tell you, just because it's been done a zillion times doesn't mean that a new spin can't be put onto it. Just look at West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet.

[AKAArzosah]

Hey I was serious. I'd watch that show!

I watch SGA (remake of SG1, and sort of similar to Voyager if you think about it)

I watch Heroes (practically a remake of X-Men, and there was Mutant X)

I watch Scrubs and House (ER, Chicago Hope - though neither were as funny)

I watch Battlestar Galactica (If you don't know what that's a remake of, I'm not telling you)

And every Star Trek is basically a remake of the one before, set in a different time or place. And there's DEFINITELY nothing wrong with that!

[AKAArzosah]

http://www.bash.org/?221128

[PointyHairedJedi]

Originally Posted by mudshark

There must be a way to manage it, though, and then you may have your series premise. Has there ever been one before in which the main character gets murdered every week? It'd be sort of Quantum Victim, or something.

...I think we've come back to The Goon Show again. Granted, Bulebottle didn't get 'deaded' every episode, but it happened pretty often, and Neddie was usually the one responsible for it.

The best ideas are already long done, it's only how you present them that matters (take a bow, Shakespeare, you huge show-off you). People need to be shown something they never did see before, and Trek did that for a while, and then didn't, and then did start to again but was canned anyway (because in TV, money comes before stories almost every time). Even having made my own suggestion, I don't honestly think that it matters much what the premise of a new show would be as long as the hands that guide it and the faces that tell it manage to show us something we never did see before. That's what made Trek big, back in the day - Roddenberry tapped into our collective sense of wonder and what-if in a way that has been lacking in the last few years. It can be that again, if only the right person can find their way into doing it.

Someone, like, say, Aaron Sork--

*Is clubbed by a piano*

[Nate the Great]

I'm reminded of the Zeroth Law of Trope Examples:

"Shakespeare did it off first. Or at least ripped it off first."

[PointyHairedJedi]

The dastard.

[Chancellor Valium]

Trek always tries 'new' and 'wacky' for the first three seasons, which tend to be rubbish. In season 4 they decide on an identity for the programme, it peaks with innovation and cool stuff in season 6 ("Chain of Command"/"Far Beyond The Stars"/Year of Hell"), season 7 is fun, good tv but lacking the "wow!" episodes and it ends.

>_><_<

I hereby patent this as Valium's Law of Star Trek.

[Nate the Great]

Um, wacky seasons? Certainly wacky episodes, wacky plotlines, but SEASONS?

No offense meant, but I'd think that Valium's Law of Star Trek would be that you need one before watching ENT.

[Chancellor Valium]

Hmm. That didn't come across right. I meant that it tries 'new' and 'wacky' episodes in the first three seasons. By midway through s3 it's settling down into an identity, but you're right, they aren't completely 'wacky'.